Monday, December 14, 2015

The ways Los Angeles rebounded from "Sa-I-Gu" (4-29), aka the 1992 " Riots", a time of murder, arson and general civil disobedience and panic brought on by the Rodney King "incident" were subtle. It took a very long time from the looting of small Korean-owned liquor stores in Koreatown and southward until the mom/pop owners (as well as some larger Korean supermarkets) would actually trust their Latino employees to handle money at the cash registers. The latter usually began as custodians and worked in the produce sections stocking familiar vegetables with odd sounding Korean names. These guys (usually) have even learned how to speak Korean! This was the time when the president of Korea came here to discuss with mayor of Los Angeles concerns for the safety of his "countrymen". Thus, well-armed US Army troops were stationed at the Korean Cultural Center, a branch of the consulate general of the ROK in the "Miracle Mile", once Los Angeles' 5th Ave. The soldiers were dressed in fatigues more suited to a forest than an urban area. Since Los Angeles' tourist trade was devastated, I assumed that the empty hotel beds were filled by the soldiers, but was told that they bivouacked in tents in a parking lot some where. One evening that week I attended the opening of an art exhibition in the gallery there, and on my way out, I asked one of the soldiers whether he had seen the exhibition. "In my estimation, that art isn't worth protecting to this extreme," I commented. He replied, "Yes, m'am."At that time I was in the midst of producing Contemporary Japanese Short Stories, a 14-hour English-language literary series for public radio at National Public Radio's KCRW, 89.9fm in Santa Monica. I suggested to the general manager, then Ruth Hirshman, that we do a Korean series to educate our very large listening audience with the cultural values of our neighbors. Los Angeles is home to the second largest urban population of Koreans, after Seoul and before Pusan. "Who knows if they even have short stories," was her reply. Of course, Korean literature is well known for its short narrative style, while Japanese is renown for its long-form novels, beginning with Tale of Genji.Upon the successful completion of the Japanese series, I embarked as executive producer on the Korean project. The challenge was to find enough works that have already been translated into English. At that time Peter Lee was at UCLA and there were very, very few easily accessible collections of material in English in even academic bookstores. (Amazon did not exist.) Korea Foundation's Koreanaprovided a story in each quarterly issue. I searched academic publishers and began to know who were the primary translators; UNESCO was among the more robust. Soon Tek Oh, the renown actor / director / community activist who lived and worked in Los Angeles, agreed to be artistic director. Bruce Fulton served as my advisor, a task required by one of the funders.

As digital media was not highly developed at that time, I present here a summation of my archived material.I hope one day to be able to post at least one of the 6 one-hour programs that were broadcast. Currently the archive is on audio tape, with copies deposited with the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles, Korea Foundation in Seoul and California Council on the Humanities. The rights and permissions for the production (including actors and publishers) were limited to two broadcasts.

I am grateful to those whose partnership made this possible. I learned a lot about Korea through its literature. Since then, the Frankfurt Bookfair featured Korea and many more works have been translated.

KCRW'S CONTEMPORARY KOREAN SHORT STORIES

The series includes 16
short works of extant published English language translations by Korea’s
acclaimed masters and upcoming stars compiled in six one-hour shows of one, two
or three stories. From time-worn rural villages to the emerging modern cities
of a conquered and now divided nation, the soldiers and shopkeepers, the
farmers, physicians and shamans tell the stories of a resilient, refined culture.

This project is funded by the California Council
on the Humanities (a state agency
of the National Endowment for the Humanities) and the Korea Foundation, with support by KCRW 89.9 fm, a community service
of Santa Monica College and the KCRW Foundation.

National (USA) Broadcast Satellite Feed: March 1st week 1997 (1 show/week
transmitted) Rights will be secured for two broadcasts a year for three years
(from date of first broadcast in 1997) by any Corporation for Public
Broadcasting qualified (noncommercial) local (Southern California) and national
(USA) radio stations; although; there are no guarantees that the series will be
broadcast more than once by any station beyond KCRW.) KCRW offers this program
to qualifying stations free of charge. {Note: 20 stations from Main to Washington were
interested.] There is further interest on the part of the Korea Foundation to
broadcast and distribute cassette copies of this program free of charge to
select reference libraries outside the USA.

Craig Coleman, Managing Editor, National English Section, The
Korea Times,
Radio Seoul consultant

Works are read by professional actors, all members
of the Society for Heritage Performers from Hollywood television, stage and
screen, and the Broadway stage, including C.W. Byun, Jeanne Chinn, Robert
Fleet, Esther Hyun, Emily Kuroda, Pierre Y. Lim, Sharline Liu, Tim Lounibos,
Soon-Tek Oh, Steve Park, Freda Foh Shen and Eric Steinberg.

PROGRAMS (maximum 59:00 minutes)

#1 Portrait of a Shaman: Newly converted to Christianity,
a son anguishes over his mother’s indigenous faith and profession as the
village shaman.

#2 Seoul 1964: Two men in a sidewalk bar follow a third into an
existential black hole; The Rock: Village lepers and beggars consider their future at the
onset of the Japanese invasion.

#3 Wonmidong Poet: A child’s view of the myriad
characters in her neighborhood in a Seoul suburb; Cranes: The division North and South
tests the friendship of two villagers.

#4 Kapitan Lee: A prominent medical doctor is determined to survive
successive occupations by Japanese, “Russkis” and “Yankees” with his social
status and career intact. Fire: A woman villager avenges the brutality of her husband’s family.

#5Cukoo:
Landing a coveted job, particularly with the victorious Americans, drive people
to extreme measures; The Crane: A lyrical fantasy of transformation.

#6 Masks: One full turn of the great wheel of life; Rainy Season: Newlyweds are initiated into
intimacy by the dynamic forces of nature; Suffering of Two Generations: Defeated in war, a father and son
join forces for renewed victory in life.

Story
Descriptions

Hwang Sun-wôn's "Cranes" (Hak)
Translated by Peter H. Lee From Flowers of Fire Published by University of Hawaii Press in 1986

Like the American Civil
War, that of Korea from 1950 - 1953 divided not only a nation but also
individual towns and families. In "Cranes" Korean
short story master Hwang Sun-won describes how the war unexpectedly brings
together two former friends in a village near the 38th parallel. This story is
one of the best examples of Hwang’s gem-like precision and psychological
insight.

Kim Yi-sôk's "The Cuckoo" (Ppôkkugi)
Translated by Peter H. Lee From Flowers of Fire Published by University of Hawaii Press in 1986

Unemployment was rampant in Korea right after the
Korean War, so any job was a gift. But a job with an American company was a
delicious piece of Apple Pie in the Sky. This the engine which drives Yisok
Kim’s "The Cuckoo".

Chôn Kwang-yong's "Kapitan Lee"
(Kkôppittan Ri) Translated by Peter H. Lee From Flowers of Fire Published by University of Hawaii Press in 1986

Koreans have often referred to their land as a
shrimp among whales. Three such whales shored up in Korea at the end of World
War II: Japan, the Soviet Union and the US. In "Kapitan Le" we meet a very successful surgeon who is
determined to survive through their struggle by reinventing himself for each
successive occupying power.

Kim Tong-ni's "Portrait of a Shaman" (Munyôdo)
Translated by Yongch’ol Kim From Flowers of Fire Published by University of Hawaii Press in 1986

For some 5000 years shamans have served the people
of Korea as keepers of their rich, indigenous spiritual traditions and as
practitioners of the healing arts. No village was without at least one
charismatic mudang who was sought out at every turn of the life cycle. Because
of this, shamanism has suffered oppression from every turn of political
history, from the influences of Chinese Confucianism, Japanese Colonialism,
Soviet Communism and as we shall see, Western Christianity. So who better,
then, to author Portrait of a Shaman", than Korea’s quintessential modern fiction writer and literary
humanist, Tong-ni Kim. Created in 1936, Kim’s mudang is every bit a Greek
tragic hero as she obeys her intuition in a fight for love and life.

Yi Hyo-sôk's "The Buckwheat Season"
(Memilggot p’il muryôp) Translated by Peter H. Lee From Flowers of Fire Published by University of Hawaii Press in 1974

Hyo-sok Yi is one of a talented group of young
Korean writers whose flame burned brightly in the 1920s and 1930s only to be
extinguished by the time of the Pacific War (World War). One of Korea’s
best-loved stories, we follow a pockmarked peddler of dry goods, Mr. Ho, and
his venerable donkey as they make the rounds of the markets in the beautiful
hill country of east-central Korea. And we listen to Ho as he spins a moonlit
year about a bygone love.

A flood is not the most
auspicious beginning for the marriage of a young rural Korean man and woman.
But emergencies have a way of drawing resources that we didn’t know we had. In
"The Rainy Season" Mal-suk Han describes how a shy country girl saves
her new husband from a near-fatal encounter with hypothermia.

Ha Kun-ch’an's "The Suffering of Two
Generations" (Sunan idea) Translated by Kevin O’Rourke From Koreana Published by Korea Foundation in Vol. 9, No. 3

The loss of Korean
national sovereignty during the Japanese occupation of 1910 to 1945, and the
division of the Korean peninsula beginning with the arrival of American and
Soviet occupation armies in 1945 and culminating in the Korean War of 1950 -
1953, are central themes of postwar Korean literature and indeed the collective
Korean consciousness. This sundering of Korea is starkly embodied by the maimed
father and son in Kun-Chan Ha’s "The Suffering of Two Generations".

Ch’oe Inho's "The Boozer" (Sulkkun)
Translated by Marshall R. Phil From Land of Exile Published by M.E. Sharpe / UNESCO in 1993

In-Ho Ch’oe is one of
the most popular novelists in Korea today, a prodigy who made his literary
debut while in high school. Ch’oe invests some of his shorter works with a
touch of the fabulous. He occasionally writes screenplays as well. His sense of
the visual and his inventive use of language are apparent in "The Boozer",
an early story, in which he weaves a web of haunting images while tracing the
odyssey of the title character.

Sung ok Kim is one of
the most prominent members of Korea’s Hangul Generation, writers who, by the
grace of history, wrote in their own Korean language rather than in the
classical Chinese of the literati or in the Japanese of the colonizers decades
before. Energized by the highs and lows of revolts against civilian and
military dictatorships, Kim’s "Seoul, 1964 Winter", is a slangy,
sardonic signature piece of his times.

Wônmi-dong is a
neighborhood in a satellite city of South Korea’s capital of Seoul, where many
countryside people have come hoping to find success. One of today’s most
commercially and critically successful authors, Kwi ja Yang has arranged for us
to meet a number of the town’s most interesting personalities including the
Wonmidong Beauty Queen, the town’s Know-it All, the Wonmidong Crooner and the
object of a six-year old’s affection, the "Wonmidong Poet".

Kim Tong-ni's "The Rock" (Bawi)
Translated by Chong-Wha Chung From Modern Korean Literature Published by Kegan Paul International

Many outstanding modern
Korean stories portray people who have not found a niche in Korea’s highly
structured society. A fine example is our first story, "The Rock", written in 1936 by one of the most influential writers in modern
Korean literature, Kim Tong-ni. We join a pack of the lowliest of the low to
discover how, once again we all must surrender to the forces of nature and
fate.

Hyôn Chin-gôn's "The Fire" (Pul)
Translated by Katherine Kisray From Modern Korean Literature Published by Kegan Paul International

Imagine a 15 year old
girl in the countryside married off to a ma she hardly knows. She bids farewell
to her family and moves into a house where she has two new masters: her husband
and his mother. She endures domestic chores during the day, wifely service at
night. Such is the situation of Suni in Chin-gon Hyon’s "Fire". But Suni is not your typical docile young bride.

Hwang Sun-wôn's "Masks" (T’al)Translated by Martin Holman From The
Book of Masks Published by
Readers International, Inc. in 1989

Short story master Sun
Won Hwang’s lyrical, poetic piece "Masks" was
written in 1971, but the work is in the greatest tradition of the world’s most
cherished spiritual texts.

Extra stories produced but not broadcast due to limitation
of airtime and story length:

Hwang Sun-wôn's "Folding the Umbrella"
(Usan ûl chôbûmyô) Translated by Stephen Epstein From The Book of Masks Published by Readers International, Inc. in 1989

A lone black fish, a bride who dreams her wedding dress is
black, a pianist whose left arm is paralyzed: Korean short story master Sun-won
Hwang fashions these seemingly disparate elements into a wistful story about
aging, loneliness and death. In this story we follow the elderly Mr. Ho,
widower, former pianist and collector of tropical fish as he folds the
umbrella, bringing his life cycle to a close. (39:18 min.)

O Yongsu's "Bird of Passage" (Hujo)
Translated by Peter H. Lee From Flowers of Fire Published by University of Hawaii Press in 1974

A strong sense of
decency pervades the people on O’s stories, even as they display the failings
that none of us is without. In "Bird of Passage", as in many of O’s
other stories, adults are uplifted by their encounters with children who manage
to retain their innocence despite circumstances that are difficult if not
desperate. (29:44 min.)

CONTINUITY: KCRW
PRESENTS CONTEMPORARY KOREAN SHORT STORIES

WRITTEN BY LAUREN W. DEUTSCH NARRATED BY SOON TEK OH

Appropriate
music and narrative material has been created and woven around the
approximately 1 - 3 stories per show. To provide the greatest range of image,
every effort has been employed to feature a diversity of themes and literary
styles, as well as a variety of geographical and historical references, with
particular effort made to include work by writers marginalized by prevailing
socio-political trends, particularly women.

BOILER
PLATE INTRO / OUTRO

(Soon
Tek Oh)

KCRW
presents “Contemporary Korean Short Stories” ... tales of survival and love,
tradition and transition created by some of the most courageous writers of the
stormy 20th Century. This is your host, Soon Tek Oh, inviting you to explore
the daily lives and dreams, intimate thoughts and world views of the resilient
people of the Land of Morning Calm.

(outro
/ LW Deutsch)

“Contemporary
Korean Short Stories” is hosted and directed by the distinguished actor Soon
Tek Oh and is produced in the studios of KCRW Radio, Santa Monica California,
in association with the Society of Heritage Performers. Executive Producer is
Lauren Deutsch. Audio design, recording and editing by Scott Fritz. Robert C.
Fleet is production coordinator. This program was supported in part by the
Korea Foundation and California Council for the Humanities, a state program of
the National Endowment for the Humanities. For a complete series bibliography,
contact your local public radio station or KCRW (310) 314-4636.

SHAMAN

For some
5000 years shamans have served the people of Korea as keepers of their rich,
indigenous spiritual traditions and as practitioners of the healing arts. No
village was without at least one charismatic mudang who was sought out at every
turn of the life cycle. Because of this, shamanism has suffered oppression from
every turn of political history, from the influences of Chinese Confucianism,
Japanese Colonialism, Soviet Communism and as we shall see, Western Christianity.
So who better, then, to author today’s story, “Portrait of a Shaman”, than
Korea’s quintesent modern fiction writer and literary humanist, Tong-ni Kim.
Created in 1936, Kim’s mudang is every bit a Greek tragic hero as she obeys her
intuition in a fight for love and life. We hope you will enjoy Emily Kuroda’s
reading of this mystically powerful tale.And now, Tong-ni Kim’s “Portrait of a Shaman” ...

That was
Emily Kuroda reading Tong-ni Kim’s “Portrait of a Shaman” from a translation by
Yongch’ol Kim published in Flowers of Fire by the University of Hawaii Press.
This concludes today’s “Contemporary Korean Short Stories” This is your host,
Soon Tek Oh. Thank you for listening.

ROCK +
SEOUL

Many
outstanding modern Korean stories portray people who have not found a niche in
Korea’s highly structured society. A fine example is our first story, “The
Rock”, written in 1936 by one of the most influential writers in modern Korean
literature, Kim Tong-ni. We join a pack of the lowliest of the low to discover
how, once again we all must surrender to the forces of nature and fate. Here is
“The Rock” read by Freda Foh Shen.

That was
Freda Foh Shen reading Tong ni Kim’s The Rock” from a translation by Chong-Wha
Chung published in Modern Korean Literature by Kegan Paul International.

Our next
story is set in the city. Sung ok Kim is one of the most prominent members of
Korea’s Hangul Generation, writers who, by the grace of history, wrote in their
own Korean language rather than in the classical Chinese of the literati or in
the Japanese of the colonizers decades before. Energized by the highs and lows
of revolts against civilian and military dictatorships, Kim’s “Seoul, 1964
Winter”, is a slangy, sardonic signature piece of his times. We hope you will
enjoy “Seoul 1964 Winter” read now by Sung Kyu Park, Ro-Soo Park and Jungha
Suk.

That was
Sung Kyu Park, Ro-Soo Park and Jungha Suk, also known as Steve Park, Tim
Lounibos and Eric Steinberg, reading Sung-ok Kim’s “Seoul 1964 Winter” from
Marshall R. Phil’s translation published in Land of Exile by M.E. Sharpe. That
concludes today’s program. This is your host, Soon Tek Oh, thank you for
listening.

MASKS
+ SUFFERING

Korea’s
short story master Sun Won Hwang’s lyrical, poetic work, “Masks” read by Ro-Soo
Park (Tim Lounibos) adapted from an English translation by Martin Holman
published in The Book of Masks by Reader’s International. Contemporary Korean Short
Stories is funded in part from a grant from Korea Foundation and the California
Council for the Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the
Humanities.

The
Suffering of Two Generations says it all. Kun-ch’an Ha’s 1957 work personalizes
Korea’s bitter struggles for over half of this Century: the Japanese
occupation, the division of the country north and south and the Pacific War.
And yet there remains enough life to go on. Here now is R.C. Fleet reading Ha’s
The Suffering of Two Generations.

That was
R.C. Fleet reading Kun-ch’an Ha’s The Suffering of Two Generations adapted for
radio from a translation by Kevin O’Rourke published in Koreana by Korea
Foundation. That concludes our program for today. This is your host, Soon Tek
Oh. Thank you for listening.

CUCKOO

Unemployment
was rampant in Korea right after the Korean War, so any job was a gift. But a
job with an American company was a delicious piece of Apple Pie in the Sky.
This the engine which drives read now by R.C. Fleet, Sharline Liu and yours
truly.

We hope
you enjoyed Yisok Kim’s “The Cukoo ” written in 1957. I was joined by R.C.
Fleet and Sharline Liu reading from a radio adaptation of the translation by
Peter H. Lee published in Flowers of Fire by the University of Hawaii Press. This is Soon Tek
Oh. Thank you for listening.

CRANES
+ WONMIDONG

Like the
American Civil War, the Korean War of 1950 to 1953 divided not only a nation
but also individual towns and families. In “Cranes” short story master Sun-won
Hwang paints delicate natural scenery for a chance reunion of two former
friends in a village near the 38th parallel. Born in what is now North Korea,
his lyrical pose and sensitive imagery preserve human innocence and spiritual
loneliness. Our first story today, “Cranes”, is read by Ro-Soo Park.

That was
Ro-Soo Park, better known as Tim Lounibos, reading Sun won Hwang’s “Cranes”
from a translation by Peter Lee published in Flowers of Fire by the University
of Hawaii Press.

We take
you now to Wônmi-dong, a neighborhood in a satellite city of South Korea’s
capital of Seoul, where many countryside people have come hoping to find
success. One of today’s most commercially and critically successful authors,
Kwi ja Yang has arranged for us to meet a number of the town’s most interesting
personalities including the Wonmidong Beauty Queen, the town’s Know-it All, the
Wonmidong Crooner and the object of a six-year old's affection, the Wonmidong
Poet. Without further ado, here is Jeannie Chinn reading Wonmidong Poet.

That was
Jeannie Chinn reading Kwi Ja Yang’s Wonmidong Poet from a translation by Julie
Pickering and So Young Kim published in the journal Manoa by the University of
Hawaii. That concludes our program for today. This is your host, Soon Tek Oh.
Thank you for listening.

KAPITAN
LEE + FIRE

The
stirringly satirical prize-winning “Kapitan Lee” by Kwang yong Chon read by
Jungha Suk (Eric Steinberg) from the English translation by Peter Lee published
in Flowers of Fire by the University of Hawaii Press.

Author /
journalist Chin-gon Hyon’s stories reflect the sufferings of the poor and
underprivileged. In The Fire, Hyon takes us to the countryside where a newly
married 15 year old girl struggles between two demanding masters, her husband
and her mother-in-law. We hope you will enjoy Freda Foh Shen’s reading of
Hyon’s 1925 story The Fire.

That was
Freda Foh Shen reading Chin-gon Hyon’s The Fire adapted for radio from a
translation by Katherine Kisray published in Modern Korean Literature by Kegan
Paul International. That concludes our program for today. This is your host,
Soon Tek Oh. Thank you for listening.

UMBRELLA
+ BIRD

A lone
black fish, a bride who dreams her wedding dress is black, a pianist whose left
arm is paralyzed ... Korean short story master Sun-won Hwang fashions seemingly
disparate elements into a wistful story about aging, lonliness and death. Here
is Jungha Suk reading Hwang’s Folding the Umbrella.

We hope
you have enjoyed Sun-won Hwang’s “Folding the Umbrella” read by Jungha Suk,
better known as Eric Steinberg ...It was adapted for radio from Stephen
Epstein’s translation in The Book
of Masks published by Readers International.

Like wild
flowers after a forest fire, it is often the most innocent who are first to
poke their heads above the ashes at the end of a war. Kindness and compassion
have survived those desperate times in author Yongsu O’s “Bird of Passage.” It
gives me great pleasure to invite you to listen as C.W. Pyun joins me in
reading this poignant story.

That was
C.W. Pyun and I reading Yongsu O’s “Bird of Passage” adapted for radio from a
translation by Peter H. Lee in Flowers of Fire, published by the University of
Hawaii Press. That concludes our program for today. This is your host, Soon Tek
Oh. Thank you for listening.

KCRW’S CONTEMPORARY KOREAN
SHORT STORIES

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How Did This Series Come About?

That this series was initiated neither
by the Korean community nor from within academia is seminal to its
significance. The program was developed from the commitment of KCRW to present
cultural programming reflecting the diversity of the community it serves.
Fueled by the events of the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest when people of Korean
heritage suffered a tremendous setback in community relations and challenged by
the fact that we knew little about the cultural foundation and contemporary
artistic expressions of our neighbors, it seemed only natural that we consider
the literature of Korea worthy of our next “audio book” project. We believe it
will prove to be as much as a community outreach tool as it will be an
entertaining and informative cultural program on radio.

In Korean Focus (published by Korea Foundation)there wasa paper presented by Jahyun Kim
Haboush at the Conference on Korea Studies held at the Library of Congress in
1992, which discussed the perceptions of Korean culture in the United States.
It stated, "Korea has been portrayed primarily as a political entity and
then as an economic entity. ... What of its cultural component? Do other
aspects of Korea penetrate into the American public consciousness? There are
still few popular representations of Korea." The author cites books
in English translation, but states that despite Korea’s 500+ years-old
tradition of universal literacy and the emphasis on literary scholarship for
all successful political and social leaders, "none has become a
household word, nor, for that matter, have they been widely read [even within
academic or literary circles.]"

In fact, at a symposium several years ago sponsored by the
now defunct Korea Society in Los Angeles with representatives of the news media
who had covered Korea, the reporters admitted having little mandate, much less
resources in time or funds, from their editors to cover little more than
economics, public policy, military activities, politics and occasionally sports
(in the case of the Seoul Olympics). An article about a kimchi museum was the
only cultural offering in their defense!

A visit to any of the major bookstores in outside this
area will uncover few books by Korean authors; a similar visit to the few
Korean bookstores will reveal a small number of books in English about contemporary
Korea culture. Of the two Korean-community newspapers published in English, one
is addressed particularly to Korean-American concerns (focused on challenges as
living as a minority population in the USA.), the other, an abridged English
edition of an international publication, is very sparse on it cultural
articles. One could make a good case that few people who do not read Korean
language even have access to literature, much less have read any material. Why
has there yet to be a Korean author winning the Nobel Prize for Literature?

What topics will the project address?

The politics of culture in Korea is one definite theme
that will be addressed. Uchang writing in Manoa (Vol.. 2, No. 2, Fall 1990), notes
that Korea’s literature has been “obsessively political. ... Writers get
involved in politics either because they have engaged in some kind of political
action or because the government has made them targets of repression because of
their writing.” The Korean word han -- living with loss -- permeates much of the genre until
the present.What else could one
expect! Entering the 20th Century after 300 years of self-imposed isolation and
strict Confucianism, Koreans endured 40 years of Japanese occupation. Then as
the battlefield for the Cold War, they experienced a split of nation, families
and soul, a daily presence of foreign (US) troops only to emerge via civil
protest through military dictatorship into the recent political scandals.
Despite the censorship and, in the case of the Japanese occupation, outlawing
of the Korean language itself, literary works were created and preserved.
Through stories situated in the cities and countryside, alienation and
victimization will be revealed.

The voice of women writers, marginalized by Korea’s deep
patriarchal Confucian roots, will be heard. There is much work in translation
being done in this area and great interest in discovering how women view their
own culture and interact with the world. Literature will also reveal how
women’s role as housewife and mother is expanded to office worker and political
activist with the changing times.

Another topic of investigation will be the influence of
the West on Korea. The temptations and realities of rapid industrialization
(vs. agrarian life which had been the populations’ major preoccupation for
centuries) and internationalization, along with Christianity and consumerism
have been felt and are represented in literary works.

What Marketing Opportunities Exist in Conjunction With
This Series?

As was mentioned earlier Los Angeles’ Koreatown is the
largest “Korean city” outside Seoul and the Korean population is among the
fastest growing immigrant population in he USA.” Thus it is definitely in the
interest of corporations and foundations to support efforts to reach the
community at large with timely and useful cultural “information” offered in
this landmark series. Professor Epstein notes in his letter of commitment to
this project that it will have “even greater value for those [people] who are
of Korean ancestry living in the USA, especially the ‘1.5 generation’ who came
here from Korea as young children.” He explains that the difficult political
times and suffering, as noted an ongoing literary theme, is not necessarily
discussed in the Korean culture schools here.

Despite several high-budget English language efforts (most
notability the Pacific Rim-focused 1991 Los Angeles Festival and the Asia
Society’s 1994 Festival of Korea) and two SRO classical performing arts events
sponsored by the Korean government (the latter attended by very few
nonKoreans), there still exists little accessible cultural material upon which to
develop reasonable, informed opinion about one of the fastest growing
populations nation-wide.

How Will The Literature Be Selected for Inclusion?

Exactly who is a Korean author -- given the number of
people exiled or self-emigrating during the oppressive times -- and who has been doing the translations of
which authors
is also being debated at this writing. Korean literature translations into English
remains a new field for scholars. This project will not “solve” these
questions, but will reflect activities to date.Given current political, we do not expect to be able to find
or include work created after 1953 by writers living in North Korea.

A library of many published anthologies and manuscripts in
English translation submitted by the Advisory Committee was assembled from
which stories were selected. No new translations were made for the series. In
addition, the Executive Producer met with translators during a conference on
Korean Literature in Translation at UCLA.

The final selection of stories depended upon each one’s
ability to be interesting listening as well as be informative and the length (no longer than
about 20 minutes when read aloud as determined by director and producer. There
was slight editing in some cases to adapt the piece for radio reading and to
enhance the continuity for listening purposes. There was one native Korean
language speaker involved in this process.

The narrative material used to provide background and
continuity of the stories was a collaboration between the Advisory Committee,
represented by Bruce Fulton, and the executive producer.

What Collateral Materials Will Be Available to the
Audience?

As in our programs of the past, KCRW will create a
bibliography of literature included in the series as well as offer additional
sources for the growing field of English language translations of Korean
literature.

OBSERVER

Lauren Deutsch is the executive producer / director of Pacific Rim Arts (www.pacificrimarts.org), a multi-cultural / multi-discipline initiative through which to explore and promote traditional cultures in contemporary life. She is a contributing editor of Kyoto Journal and writes for numerous other scholarly and cultural print and online publications, as well as public radio and television productions. A student since 1985 of Sosei Matsumoto, sensei, Lauren was initiated as “Sochi” (her professional name) in 1997 by Sen Soshitsu, Hounsai, the XVth Grand Master of the Urasenke School of Tea in Kyoto, and licensed to be an instructor. Lauren can be reached at mailto:sochideutsch@gmail.com.